This interlude story came about after I was sat thinking about quantum mechanics (as sometimes happens when you’re me). The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle mixed with Wave-Particle Duality works on the basis that anything that may possess wave-particle duality can be both a wave and a particle at the same time, but will become a fixed point upon observation. Now add to this the idea that if you had a wave as big as the universe it could, in theory, exist everywhere at the same time.

I mixed in the problem of Santa having to reach every house on the planet in one night and came up with the idea that Santa must exist in a state of Wave-Particle Duality with his wave being equal, or greater, in size than that of the Earth’s own waveform. However, he cannot be observed in this form or he will suddenly exist in only one position; which makes delivering presents a problem.

Thus this story was born. Tune in later for the rest of this little interlude!

This interlude story came about after I was sat thinking about quantum mechanics (as sometimes happens when you’re me). The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle mixed with Wave-Particle Duality works on the basis that anything that may possess wave-particle duality can be both a wave and a particle at the same time, but will become a fixed point upon observation. Now add to this the idea that if you had a wave as big as the universe it could, in theory, exist everywhere at the same time.

I mixed in the problem of Santa having to reach every house on the planet in one night and came up with the idea that Santa must exist in a state of Wave-Particle Duality with his wave being equal, or greater, in size than that of the Earth’s own waveform. However, he cannot be observed in this form or he will suddenly exist in only one position; which makes delivering presents a problem.

Thus this story was born. Tune in later for the rest of this little interlude!

I’ve finally sorted out the issue of speech bubbles on these comics, so from now on expect things to be a little easier to read (that’s the plan anyhow!). I’ve also begun using a new system for creating the pages in this comic and I think it works very nicely. Instead of creating each panel as a separate A4-sized page and then creating a huge page to lay them all out on once they’re done, I’ve simply created one A4-sized page and arranged a series of boxes on it to decide on panel layout. I work in Photoshop, which I got a copy of while a student five years ago but only really started using when I began doing these comics again, so it’s fairly simple to do all this.

Once that’s done, I’ve created a new layer in Photoshop and sketch each panel onto it. These sketches are always rough but they show me what I need to draw properly in the next stage. Once the sketch is done I make the final adjustments to the layout of the boxes (and re-sketch any panels that need re-sketching) then create a new layer and draw the first panel on it. If it looks good, I merge the box for that panel with the line art and colour directly onto the line work. I then create another new layer and do the next panel, and so on. Once I’m done I can turn the sketch layer invisible (I never delete it, I just make it invisible so I can come back and do a comparison if needs be) and move the panels around a little as needed, so they all fit nicely onto the page in the order I need them in.

I then start adding the speech bubbles, sound effects and so forth. These are all created as individual layers of text that can be moved around and positioned as needed. It takes a while but I generally get them all done inside an hour or so. Once I’m satisfied with them I begin creating the bubbles, boxes and so forth. These require two layers: one for the outline, one for the white centre. It’s annoying that I have to work like that instead of being able to create one coloured image for each bubble but I suppose it gives me the advantage of being able to adjust the outline thickness to suit whatever I’m doing. After I’m satisfied that the bubble is drawn correctly and the text lines up inside it nicely, I merge all the portions of each bubble, with text, into one layer so I can move it around as needed without worrying about getting things out of position.

All in all, I’d estimate this method of comic creation takes me about three hours in total. This might seem a lot (and it is when you consider that I’m doing this in my spare time) but it’s also a lot quicker than the old system, which required almost endless readjustment of the size of each panel as well as all of the above. I like the new style and I think I’ll be using it from now on. 🙂

This has been a long time coming and for that I apologise. It would have been up last night but, unfortunately, as soon as I’d e-mailed an article to a magazine I volunteer with, my Internet connection died. In some ways I’m lucky that the connection lasted that long since the article was being sent practically on the deadline but it would have been nice if it had lasted a bit longer.

I’m hoping to be back on to the weekly Monday updates from here on in, so stay tuned because Part Six is coming your way in just a few days time!

Sorry peeps, I should have said this earlier. I’m away working on a novel that has been going ’round in my head for so long now that I need to get it done or I’ll just simply go insane. I’ll be back as soon as it’s finished, which won’t be long now because I’ve been working on it as part of that annual NaNoWriMo.org thing and I’m doing very well with it.